The flash visit of the French head of State, Francois Hollande, to the Cauca region on January 24, opened a bottle of conflicting emotions among inhabitants of this Colombian region.

President Hollande, accompanied by Colombian president Juan Manuel Santos, visited the headquarters of the Tripartite Monitoring and Verification Mechanism[1] in La Venta, where he held a meeting of almost two hours with representatives of the three parts of the Mechanism: United Nations, FARC-EP and National Government.

There were hundreds of journalists, accredited by the Presidency of the Republic, who also took charge of gathering them, transporting them on two buses, taking them to the news site where they were carefully directed towards what some gossiping voices ​​called "the chicken coop"; A place of some thirty square meters delimited with tape, from which all journalists obtained the same exact arrival image of the two presidents.

Let's not leave anything to chance. Everything has to be perfect.

Meanwhile, a few hundred meters from the site, no cameras were present to record the discussion between seven Nasa[2] people and several members of the Army who were guarding the first checkpoint, which was in charge of stopping the flow of vehicles and to keep the highway clear.

The conversation was not recorded, so the exact words that they used will never be known, what was known, was that the natives were asking to enter in order to participate in the meeting with President Hollande.

The Nasa representatives, six governors and one Senior Councilor of the Sac Tama Quiwe association of cabildos[3], had met the day before with representatives of the Presidency, where it was agreed that they would participate in the meeting with the presidents. They had come to comply with the arranged but were confronted with a wall of bureaucracy, indifference, and falsehood. There was no entry for them, that was the order.

After some consultations, only one of them was allowed entrance. He entered with his bastón de mando[4] (command baton) and passed - looking straight ahead without speaking to anyone - in front of the Presidency, the French security and the cameras ... He went to the tent where the meeting with the presidents would take place and sat there, alone. He lasted almost two hours like that, sitting still, waiting for the meeting.

On the afternoon of January 23, one day before the visit, the speaker of the Nasa community, located at the top of the cabildo's house, made the last call to the natives for them to be attentive to the presidential visit, the call was made in Nasa Yuwe[5] language and then Spanish:

"Let’s thank the presidents for taking us into account; this visit is very important for all of us. Therefore, we have to organize the town and we are going to make a minga[6] to collect garbage"

In the afternoon Nasa children were seen helping collect garbage from the dusty streets of Pueblo Nuevo.

On January 22 there was another Indian minga on the road that goes from Santa Rosa to Caldono. Men and women with their babies tied behind their backs worked on the road with machetes, spades and shovels. They said they were repairing the road for the arrival of the President.

Guillermo Alberto Camacho, a member of the community, tried to choose his words carefully in order to balance hope with skepticism, while saying:

"I thank the President of France for his visit.... But I hope he does something for the poor, because if he only comes to make promises and leave ... I don’t have anything to criticize him on at this moment because it is just the first time he comes. Maybe it is necessary to wait, maybe he does want to help the indigenous"

Nelia Collazos, an indigenous woman from the village of Santa Rosa, expressed herself without any fear:

"I think there will be peace among those who have money, but for us I think things will remain the same. Those who have money will live well, as for us, we will live in the same conditions. Maybe certain things will change with the help of those who are coming to visit, maybe they’ll help us develop the community. Hopefully the President of France will look at the needs that we Nasa people have"

The Nasa understood the importance of the visit; They understood that it might bring some benefit to their lands, which have always been forgotten by the Colombian State. Until the afternoon of January 23 they continued to believe that the president might pass through Pueblo Nuevo; they prepared dances, brought banana and cassava to prepare a sancocho[7] for the president and prepared their handicrafts for this important event. After the meeting with the Presidency of the Republic and with the governors, on the afternoon of the 23rd, they were informed that the communities were not included in the program.

All this -and more- must have crossed the mind of the indigenous leader who sat for two hours awaiting the meeting with the presidents. At the end of the meeting, the remaining six cabildo governors were allowed to enter in order for them to assist to the press conference that the presidents granted.

Meanwhile, in Pueblo Nuevo, the life of the Nasa returned to normality: to the minga, the craftsmanship, the cultivation of cabuya; to boredom, to the repetition of history.

By: Alexandra Nariño

This article was originally published in spanish in the Comandante Alfonso Cano Bloc of the FARC-EP, visit their website here

[1] Translators note: The Tripartite Monitoring and Verification Mechanism, known as MM&V for its Spanish acronym, is an organ composed of United Nations observers, delegates of the Colombian government and delegates of the FARC-EP. Its role is to monitor the bilateral ceasefire between the FARC-EP troops and Colombian Armed Forces, as well, its role is to verify the compliance of the implementation of the agreements on the “End of Conflict” point, that is to say, the entire process of troop concentration in specific zones (Transitional Local Zones for Normalization) and the reincorporation and decommissioning of weapons process.

[2] Translators note: The Nasa are a Native American people who live in the southwestern highlands of Colombia, this is an indigenous people that like most Colombians in the countryside, have suffered the neglect of State abandonment and armed conflict.

[3] Translators note: An Indigenous Cabildo is a legally recognized special entity conformed of a group of native people and has a certain level of autonomy, representation and legal recognition.

[4] Translators note: The Bastón de Mando (Command Baton) is a baton that carries special symbolic meaning for many indigenous peoples which indicates a person’s authority or command over an indigenous identified collective. Chiefs and representatives of indigenous tribes are those who tend to carry such batons.

[5] Translators note: Nasa Yuwe is the name of the official language of the Nasa people.

[6] Translators note: Minga is a form in which indigenous peoples refer to a solidary gathering in order to carry out a common effort aimed at a given objective, it can be something as simple as organizing to collect garbage or it can extend to organizing different indigenous peoples around the country in order to carry out a given act of protest as it has happened in the recent past.

[7] Tranlators note: Sancocho is a soup that is composed of diverse ingredients, its specific composition varies according to the region and/or culture

Top US anti-drug official William Brownfield* made some curious declarations on the 16th of June, regarding coca production and drug policy in Colombia.

He said, among others, that

"We have to acknowledge that as the peace process and its negotiations have developed over the last four years, one of the elements of Colombian government policy that has not been maintained at its previous level is counter-narcotics and eradication".

Leaving aside the diplomatic nuances, it seems like he’s suggesting that the peace process is a spanner in the works of anti-drug efforts in Colombia.

In my opinion, his declarations are short-sighted, misleading and go against what has been agreed in Havana on substitution of illicitly used crops. According to numbers from the Colombian government, the total amount of hectares sowed with coca crops started to increase between 2010 and 2011 (with 2000 hectares), while the peace process didn’t start until November 2012. That is, the tendency to growth existed long before the peace process started, so there’s no point in linking the phenomenon “peace process” to the variable “areas of coca cultivation”. We shouldn’t compare apples to oranges.

Besides, numbers from different national and international agencies coincide in that, if we ignore the 2000-peak, coca cultivation has slightly increased since the nineties. The war on drugs, which started in 2001, produced a sudden decrease in coca crops, only until growers moved to alternative areas in 2004. Since then, cultivation has had its ups and downs; not quite a convincing result of the millionary investment made in coca field reduction.

It is widely known that the historical response by coca growers to eradication policies without social investment and aerial spraying has been that of displacement and re-sowing in other areas. That is why the parties to the peace talks designed a new strategy, changing the focus of drug-policy and recognizing it as a social and not a criminal problem.

Brownfield’s knee-jerk statements instigate the Colombian government to act contrary to what has been agreed in Havana. But at the same time, the US government has been an active supporter of the peace process. The message sent here is therefore quite ambiguous: support for the peace process - understood as demobilization of the guerrilla forces and their reintegration into civil life - but not for the agreements made on social investment in areas of coca cultivation, de-criminalization of coca growers and consumers, among others.

His declarations are disturbing in the sense that Colombian elites in power might take his clumsy remarks seriously, and even hastily assume them as guidelines. After all, they are infamously known for blindly translating Washington’s desires into policies for the country. They might therfore do anything to keep the “power behind the power” satisfied, even if this implies returning to backward policies proven fruitless a long time ago.

To be honest, I don’t believe we should be making a cost-benefit analysis here, or at least not in terms of dollars vs. hectares of coca fields. The United States – and the world- should simply celebrate the fact that the Colombian government has finally decided to abandon the criminal aerial sprayings, causing devastating effects to flora, fauna, crops and human beings; that it has convinced itself of the fact that criminalizing peasants doesn’t lead anywhere. They should support Colombia in its efforts to leave backwardness behind and start a new, evidence-based approach on drugs, a more humane and clever one.

The FARC-EP is fully convinced that the new drug-policy, agreed at the peace talks, will represent a historic breakthrough and a huge step forward in the fight against drugs; it will be a model for other countries at the regional and global level.

Opinion articles and different features on (forced) recruitment of children in the FARC-EP, demonstrate a lack of knowledge of the guerrillas by many. In other cases, it shows a clear intention to mislead it.

As in the issue of sexual violence, about which I wrote in a previous blog, a discussion stripped of prejudice can be much more useful, if we want to reach reconciliation and build a better country. This, of course, is a thorny issue. Indignation when we deal with minors, is big, though not without a certain amount of hypocrisy when we look at the disproportionality the issue of children is handled with when it refers to children in the FARC-EP on the one hand and the exploitative situation, poverty and misery children are subjected to in Colombia, on the other.

War is not a suitable place to build a life for anyone, less for children. But their arrival in the ranks of the FARC-EP has been a consequence of precisely that difficult situation of children in rural areas (and also in cities) of Colombia; not its cause. However, we understand that explain the causes is not enough and that concrete actions are needed to solve them.

This protocol, which represents our vision of solution, and was presented to the Special Representative of the Secretary General of the UN, Leila Zerrougui, stipulates the principles that from our point of view should govern the selection of hosting families and communities, as well as health, housing, education, psychosocial care, recreation conditions and, of course, security, among many other things. Among the institutions that in the opinion of the FARC-EP should be linked to the program are the ICRC, the United Nations and social and community organizations.

The participation of the Institute of Family Welfare was discarded because repeatedly, children who had been taken in by this institute ended in military bases and then infiltrated the ranks of the insurgency. Both the Host Program and the commitment of not allowing under 17 to join, would be subject to verification and monitoring by the same organizations linked to the program, the FARC-EP and the United Nations.

Then the issue, apparently, was forgotten. What happened? Why didn't the withdrawal of the children continue? At one point, comandante Ivan Marquez said a group of 13 children under 15 years was involved.

The Army, the prosecution and therefore the media, said no less than 3000 children are in the ranks of the FARC-EP. Incidentally, it is absurd to think that a popular army with so many children would have been able to face the Plan Patriota and the Plan Espada de Honor, executed by well trained and equipped 500,000 men. Although we know that these numbers come from the brains of counter-insurgency war think-tanks, the reality is that by asking the High Commands of the blocks, only 13 were the children under 15 found in camps of the FARC-EP.

Moreover, the delay in carrying out the protocol is due not to a lack of will on the side of the insurgency, but to a lack of interest on the Government's side, as it is more interested in identifying further measures of de-escalation, such as decontamination and cleaning the territories of explosive remnants of war; something to which, of course, we attach great importance.

Finally, it is worth also mentioniong the reaction of several of the children who will have to leave what has constituted their new family:

- Why, if we are rebels, we must obey rules imposed by people who do not even know our situation?

- They should know we will join again!

It is the other side of the coin, unknown to the public, but it is also a reality.

From 19 to 21 April 2016 the United Nations hosted in New York a special session of the General Assembly on drugs (UNGASS).

In spite of the obvious fact that many scholars, institutions and civil society from all over the world are changing their points of view on how to lead the fight against drugs, the United Nations, characterized by its slow apparatus and its running-behind-the-facts nature, didn't adequately get hold of these developments. But at least there were several voices that reflected the generalized opinion, based on clear figures published after thorough academic research, that the War on Drugs hopelessly failed.

In 2000, during the peace process of El Caguán (a peace process that was broken up in 2001), the FARC-EP proposed a Pilot Project for the Substitution of Coca Crops . It was a pilot project for the substitution of illicit crops in a town called Cartagena del Chairá, without using aerial spraying, violence or repression. Although it was positively received by the international community, the government never paid much attention to this proposal and never gave it a try.

However, almost two decades later, at the peace talks in Havana, Cuba, the discussion on illicit drugs was re-taken with the fourth point of the Agenda: Solution to the problem of Illicit Drugs. The insurgency made 50 proposals on the matter, in the same vein as in 2000: No aerial spraying or forced eradication of crops, but a social focus should be the the course to take, at least what the coca growers and the consumers concerns. Thus, it is important to understand that peasants don’t grow coca crops because they want to, but because they don’t have other means of subsistence.

In the agreement, this understanding of the problem of drug-trafficking as a social problem and not a criminal issue is omnipresent. The weakest links of the drug-trafficking chain – that is, the growers and the consumers – are supported with substitution and public health programs, respectively. The substitution programs are closely linked to the first agreement on Comprehensive Rural Reform, as they provide health care, education, technical assistance, soft loans and tertiary roads for peasants to be able to grow legal crops. With the substitution programs the campesinos should be able to change quickly and voluntarily to other crops that should provide them welfare and well-being.

Substitution will be implemented through Comprehensive Plans for Substitution and Alternative Development in each region; these Plans will be build and agreed with representatives from the whole municipality. The community commits to real substitution of crops and to not re-planting them, while the government commits to cease persecution of the communities for two years from the beginning of the implementation.

Prosecution will take place against those who really profit from drug-trafficking: the networks for money laundering and drug-traffickers. Finally, the agreement also recognizes that the problem of illicit drugs isn’t Colombia’s problem; it is an international thing that needs a global solution. Therefore, it was agreed to hold an international conference within the framework of the United Nations, that should open the doors to a new drug policy world-wide.

In February this year, a small delegation including myself visited the guerrilla camps of southern Colombia. I met with a lot of coca growers who had many questions about what had been agreed on the subject of illicit drugs. There was a lot of interest for the subject, because as they put it: this is about our future. There were strong rumours about the government and the FARC-EP who would work together and force the campesinos to eradicate their coca crops, and those who didn’t collaborate would be fumigated. The Peace Delegation had a meeting with social leaders from the area, in which we explained the content, scope and real impact of this agreement.

Forced eradication, without implementing other sustainable substitution programs, blatantly violates the spirit of what has been agreed in Havana.

As we are heading towards agreements on a final and bilateral ceasefire and cessation of hostilities, on paramilitarism and on decommissioning of arms – and, in the end, towards a Final Peace Accord, the question is: wouldn’t it be the perfect moment to start implementing some aspects of the agreement on illicit drugs right away?

The Panama Papers were a shock therapy which lasted only half a second. It was like when the wind lifts the skirt of a girl on the street. Embarrased, she puts her hands on her lap to lower it and then squints, with burning cheeks, around her: Who saw it?

Who saw it? There was no need for the scandal around Mossack Fonseca to vanish that quickly. It revealed once again that corruption has always been both a consequence and a fundamental pillar of capitalism. It showed that corruption and fraud are not a problem of "some countries", usually from the third world, as it had been portrayed for a long time, but rather a systemic problem involving much of the world elite.

And it produces victims. Tax evasion at a large as the Panama Papers creates inequality with millions of victims worldwide, mostly in poor countries, but also in European countries ordinary people are affected. No budget for education, for health, for culture, tax increases, cutbacks on expenses ... Well, it turns out that the money does exist; only that it’s found in a Sesame temple across the ocean, tax free!

But we don’t feel like we were victims of corruption. We see the elites usurping wealth and the poor eating misery, and it gives us a vague feeling that something is not right. We protest against it, but it’s still an abstract crime committed by some Mr. X. There's a reason why they are called white collar crimes: they are clean, invisible, coldly calculated.

The former director of the National Taxes and Customs Directorate (DIAN), Juan Ricardo Ortega, estimated in an interview with Caracol Radio that Colombia's elites have hidden 100 billion dollars in tax havens; 600 thousand facade companies created in Panama to evade taxes and about 800 thousand Colombians appear in the Panama Papers.

100 billion dollars are more than a quarter of Colombia's GDP, which is 378.4 billion dollars. A quarter of GDP in tax havens!

Therefore, it is not a minor scandal. Much less if we consider that Colombia -as expressed by economist Thomas Piketty recently at the Externado University of Colombia- is one of the most unequal countries of the world, "far beyond what can be justifiable in a society".

Tax evaders are stealing the budget for health, education, peace plans, infrastructure plans and drinking water. To justify themselves, they hide behind the law, equating "legal" with "ethical", protected by governments around the world, because it are also politicians, their families and their social circles who benefit from this deal. Hence the picture is completed. One would think that taxes on 100 billion dollars could contribute significantly to the construction of the New Colombia of the post agreements. All that is needed to address this phenomenon of tax havens is ... political will. To cover up the fact that political will is nonexistent, a smokescreen must be invented.

That's the reason why the suspicion of money possession by the FARC, which according to The Economist has never been proven despite numerous investigations by various agencies – confirmed even by the President –, turns out to be far more serious than the millionaire tax evasion by the elites.

Regarding an article published in The Guardian, called "Colombia peace deal with Farc is hailed as new model for ending conflicts" written by Ed Vulliamy, I would like to make a few clarifications.

The author mentions that only one of the six elements of the Agenda remains to be discussed: decommissioning and disarmament. If only it were that easy! Within the point of victims, the issue of non-repetition is still to be dealt with. A Commission for the Clarification and Dismantlement of Paramilitary structures has been created to that end.

After that, there are still two points left. The first one is End of Conflict, consisting of seven (!) sub-points, among which the revision of the situation of prisoners, charged or convicted for belonging to or collaborating with the FARC-EP, institutional adjustments for the construction of peace and bilateral and definitive cease of fire and hostilities. The second one is implementation, verification and countersignature of the peace accord (1).

The overall impression that remains with the reader of the article is that the government won a historic victory: the guerrilla fighters will have to respond for their crimes. Only when the reader arrives to the last paragraphs of the article, he or she finds out that State agents are also mentioned in the agreement. According to Vulliamy, Santos made "one concession that could leave many who served under him also facing justice" (referring to the inclusion of State agents in the agreement), although he "gained more ground from Farc than had been expected".

This is completely in line with the position that has been taken by the government - and by the mainstream media- from the beginning of the peace talks: the FARC are responsible for this war and will have to pay for their crimes.

However, although the insurgency has never denied its part in this conflict, it is important to keep in mind that, after a long period of silence about State crimes, the truth is beginning to float to the surface.

In spite of the chaos that exists regarding numbers and statistics of cases after so many years of conflict, there is enough evidence to affirm that the State (individually or in compliance with paramilitaries) can be held liable for 80% of the crimes committed during the conflict.

Selective and collective homicides, torture, forced displacement, extrajudicial executions, persecution of political opponents, illegal arrests and forced disappearances are part of the list of State crimes, committed in a systematic and deliberate way. In the case of the forced disappearances, just to mention an example, if we take the number from the Prosecutor?s Office of 45.000 disappeared people, we must draw the conclusion that the Colombian State has disappeared more people than Chile?s and Argentina's dictatorships together(2) .

Back in 1994, Amnesty International already reported that "since 1986 (until 1993), 20.000 people (in Colombia) have lost their lives for political reasons, the majority of them by hands of the military forces and the paramilitary groups allied to them"(3).

It is important to note that the agreement is for all combatants, not only for FARC combatants but also for the Colombian Armed Forces ? implied in serious human rights violations like the more than 5.700 cases of false positives ? and for paramilitaries. More so, it not only concerns combatants, but also non-combatants, that is, the masterminds behind the war, the ones who planned, financed and organized it.

All this leads us to the conclusion that Vulliamy's sentence:

"Guerrilla leaders who ?recognise their responsibility in a late fashion" face trial by the new tribunal and jail terms of between five and eight years. Those who "fail to recognise their responsibility and are declared guilty ... will be convicted to prison sentences of up to 20 years"

? is misleading, yet the author, putting the word "guerrilla leaders" at the beginning of the sentence, suggests that justice is only to be applied to one of the parties of the conflict: the guerrillas.

Nothing further from the truth. As Timoleón Jiménez, commander-in-chief of the FARC-EP, said in his final statement on the day the agreement was signed:

"The system is designed so that all parts involved in the conflict - combatants and non-combatants, have the opportunity to provide comprehensive, detailed and full Truth, which can allow them to access to punitive measures of restorative nature, of reparation for the victims."

In my opinion, therein lies the importance of the agreement as a model for ending conflicts in the world, not in "Farc leaders electing to co-operate in order to receive alternative sanctions".

There is a global trend by the dominant system of categorizing insurgent movements as criminal business networks, depriving them from their revolutionary essence.

Using this negative image for media purposes and propaganda, to make the public believe that an insurgency "has lost its political ideals a long time ago' or "has become a corrupt movement looking for business" is one thing; but when the State itself begins to get convinced of this idea and bases its negotiation strategy on this wrong thesis is another. This can bring many disastrous consequences, one being the popular idea that you can co-opt rebels with economic incentives. This topic is discussed in a recently published investigation by David Brenner, called "Ashes of co-optation: armed group from fragmentation to the rebuilding of popular insurgency in Mayanmar".

Burma (or Myanmar), Southeast Asian country of 60 million inhabitants and with an area of ??678 500 square kilometers, has lived in a permanent state of civil war between ethnic groups and the government, since independence from the UK in 1948. Ethnic minorities such as the Shan, Lahu and Karen, constituting about 35% of the population, demand a degree of autonomy and representation in the government and in the economy.

In 2012, one of the most noted conflicts there was waged in the region of Kachin, a state in northern Burma. There operates the Kachin Independence Army (KIA), created in 1961, three years before the founding of the FARC-EP, in order to obtain autonomy for the Kachin ethnic group in the region. In the 90s, the guerrillas negotiated a bilateral ceasefire with the government, which was broken by government forces who launched an attack against the KIA in 2011. The conflict broke out again, and only since 2011 there have been 100,000 internally displaced and thousands of people have been killed.

So far the general information, let's get back now to the investigation of Mr. David Brenner. In the article, he describes how the Burmese government designed its strategy to reach a ceasefire on providing economic incentives to the insurgency. Brenner argues that this strategy of changing insurgent leaders into businessmen and thus co-opt them, disregarding their political and social demands, has failed.

The idea of co-opting the insurgency by buying the insurgents is based on the idea that insurgencies rise because of economic motivations that are defined as "greed"; that is, instead of perceiving the insurgent movement as a collective struggle against an economic system, it is understood rather as a struggle based on individual ambitions and motivations. This approach has been proposed by Paul Collier, but has been refuted by more recent quantitative studies, which show that the economic, political and social demands continue to motivate the existence of the various insurgencies in the world today.

The reality of Kachin is a practical demonstration of how wrong Collier's theory is, and it also shows the importance of learning from this mistaken and limited counterinsurgency approach. What happened?

The Burmese government used as the main tool to achieve a ceasefire with the KIA, economic benefits and opportunities for its leaders, offering productive projects in the region. The economy, once the ceasefire came into effect, began to prosper. Chinese companies started to exploit the gold mines, jade mining revived and timber exploitation.

At first, this had beneficial effects for the area that had been assigned to the KIO (Organization for Kachin Independence, which is part of the KIA) for them to administer. An efficient administrative structure was mounted, with departments of health, education, agriculture and women's issues. The guerrillas built schools, hospitals, infrastructure; they formed nurses, teachers.

But, on the other hand, many leaders of the KIO became corrupt; they began to favor their families, buy houses and land in abundance and they became business partners with their former enemies. Their individual economic interests led to internal conflicts and, ultimately, to the fragmentation of the movement?s leadership.

At the same time, amid the ceasefire that was still in force, the KIO could no longer protect civilians from abuses by government troops, who extorted, expropriated and displace people. The KIO was placed between the civilian population and the government, trying not to break the ceasefire while maintaining relationships of trust with the population at the same time, but the lack of protection and the participation of the KIO in destructive extractive industries made that people were losing their faith in the insurgency.

So far one might think that the government's strategy applied to the leaders of the insurgency had been successful, as the KIO was weakened, fragmented and discredited. However, in 2011, when government troops attacked KIA units, something happened that nobody expected ...

The KIO responded with a military force, an organizational discipline and popular support that stunned the world. While the old guard had taken care of business, initially the defections increased and the morale lowered. "We just didn't know what to fight for anymore", said a KIA soldier who spoke to the author of the essay in April 2014. But then a new leadership rose within their ranks, a new generation of cadres, led by Brig Gun Maw, who began to build strategic alliances with the two largest churches in the region, thus helping to restore legitimacy with the communities. Likewise, they began to recruit young people massively, for which they created the ?Education and Economic Development for Youth" youth movement department, which has incorporated hundreds of university and highschool students. In 2007 they founded a school for cadres and now they have approximately 10,000 well-equipped and well-trained fighters, in the political, military and ideological field.

The conflict revived in Kachin. The main lesson, according to academic David Brenner, is that economic incentives do not meet the political demands. If the legitimate political, economic and social demands of an insurgency are not met, it is likely that violence - sooner or later - will re-emerge with even greater force.

Brenner, David (2015): Ashes of co-optation: armed group from fragmentation to the rebuilding of popular insurgency in Mayanmar, Conflict, Security & Devlopment, DOI: 10.1080 / 14678802.2015.1071974

In July 1995, during the war in Yugoslavia, a group of approximately 400 Dutch peacekeepers grouped in a battalion called Dutchbat III, was in Bosnia and Herzegovina to protect Bosnian people against ethnic cleansing carried out by the Serbs.

When the army of the Bosnian Serb forces, under the command of General Ratko Mladic, was approaching the city of Srebrenica, safe area declared by the UN, the vast majority of inhabitants of this city sought refuge in the camp of the Dutch peacekeepers. The Dutch military, in a conduct of criminal negligence, delivered tens of thousands of Bosnian Muslims to the Serbs, to save their own lives. 8373 of them were killed by Serb soldiers and paramilitaries.

In 2006, the soldiers of Dutchbat III were decorated by the Dutch defense minister, which was strongly criticized by survivors of the genocide. In 2010, relatives of the victims sued the battalion commander, Karremans, and two other officers for complicity in genocide. Last year, the Dutch public prosecutor decided that it would not sue them, but the lawyer of the family keeps on insisting, saying: "I have the strong impression that the prosecution did want to sue the commanders of the battalion, but that it was prevented from above. I think that at these levels, the prosecution of their own military is considered "undesirable".

Passing through the US...

Since the US invasion in Iraq in 2003, a multitude of reports from human rights organizations have come out with evidence that the US Army and thousands of private military contractors, or mercenaries, have killed civilians, raped women, tortured prisoners and detained thousands of people arbitrarily; all this with almost total impunity. Perhaps the best known example was in 2007, when the company Blackwater mercenaries killed 17 Iraqi civilians and wounded 20 more, in Nisour Square of the city of Baghdad.

... ending up in Colombia.

In 2008, the first cases of the euphemistically called "false positives" in Colombia were revealed: extrajudicial executions of civilians by the Army, presented as guerrilla fighters killed in combat, in order to obtain bonuses, vacation or just to show results. Although these cases really started to appear in the 90s, there was a dramatic increase under Uribe?s administration. On May 27, 2010, Philip Alston, UN special rapporteur for arbitrary executions, presented a report following his visit to Colombia, stating that impunity for these crimes covers 98.5% of the cases.

***

Some of these cases are better known than others. Some of them show criminal policies; a systematic nature of the atrocities. Others represent isolated - but very serious - cases, for example the military of Dutchbat III. However, there is a word that identifies them all, a common denominator: impunity. In all three situations, the military are protected, either subtly or blatantly, by 'respectable' institutions of national life, or even by the international community. In the case of the US mercenaries, we could even affirm that it is a mechanism invented to do just that: to shed State responsibilities and ensure impunity to the perpetrators of crimes committed on behalf of the State.

What is so shocking about this, is not the fact that there are abuses or violations of human rights in conflicts, since wars are carried out with deadly weapons used by imperfect human beings, who sometimes don?t even possess much ethical or moral values. The sad, unacceptable aspect of this, lies in the impunity.

Some governments, penal institutions and personalities are constantly reminding us that there shouldn?t be impunity for the FARC-EP in the peace process that is taking place in Havana, Cuba. One example is the Attorney General, Alejandro Ord??ez, who recently said that "there can't be any peace agreement with the impunity intended by the FARC". Likewise, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court Fatou Bensouda said that international justice won't allow impunity in Colombia, for the sake of peace.

The insurgency, meanwhile, has repeated on many occasions that in criminal matters, its goal is not to exchange impunity. That should be clear by now.

However, it is important to remember that the FARC has its own Disciplinary Rules, published on our web pages for anyone who is interested in knowing them. These rules describe which acts are considered faults and crimes within the organization, and the penalties that are to be applied when people commit them. It is fully applied in our daily lives, in all FARC units nationwide and in all ranks; this can be affirmed by any combatant, ex combatant or expert on the FARC-EP. The penalty, which must always contain elements of physical work, study and self-criticism to self-improvement, is part of our lives in the ranks of the FARC-EP. I even believe that there are no guerrilla combatants who have never been sanctioned. Severe crimes, including rape, desertion with arms or money or homicide are punished with a war council that can lead to a drastic sanction or even death penalty[1].

And when a FARC-EP combatant is captured by the enemy, he can get three to ninety years of prison, just because of belonging to an organization "outside the law"; Not to mention torture, psychological abuse, sexual violence against female guerrilla combatants, and judicial assemblies; this has been denounced time and again by our prisoners. Since time back, there has been a relentless criminal prosecution by the State against anything that smells of FARC, while there is a clear abandonment of its obligation to prosecute crimes committed by the State forces and its paramilitaries.

So the ones who enjoy impunity are others; we aren?t part of this story. I can assure you that FARC-EP combatants don?t enjoy a 98.5% impunity. We are not the ones who historically have enjoyed it, no matter the fact that our "justice system" - that is, our disciplinary rules - are not assessed adequately by this neo-liberal, social-democratic world; a world, which lacks moral and ethical authority to judge us.

It would be good to make a fair balance when it comes to criminal matters, and that these elements be taken into account. The false and one-sided idea that the FARC-EP are the criminals who are not willing to go to jail should be revaluated; more so, because those who have open accounts with justice - and, more importantly, with the victims - continue being "the untouchables".

[1]Here applies the fundamental right non bis in ?dem, which says that the same person can't be sentenced for the same crime twice. The State cannot intend to punish guerrilla fighters for crimes that have been punished by the guerrilla already, according to its own laws.

Recently, a delegation of women from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, People?s Army (among whom the author of this article), met a delegation of the Alliance for Global Justice, comprising the National Lawyers Guild, the International Action Center and the Task Force on the Americas.

The participants came from Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Kentucky, Michigan, New York, Pennsylvania and Texas, as well as from Colombia, Costa Rica and Puerto Rico.

The meeting treated issues like gender perspective at the peace talks, the role of women in the FARC-EP, but also general topics like why the guerrilla forces exist in the first place, the role the guerrillas play in the areas where they are in charge and the FARC's viewpoint on LGBT, to mention just a few.

It became clear that there exist a lot of misunderstandings about the FARC-EP, especially in the United States. Many people don't know why we are at the peace talks; if we have or not a political program; if we see our families; if we are or not a political party, among many other issues, whether they be personal, political or military.

The reason is that people don't have access to information about the FARC-EP. Without information, no balanced opinion can be formed. The media could play an important role in providing information, but they have a clear political framework within which they (have to) operate. Terrorist organizations fall outside that framework and are considered groups of outsiders with unacceptable political (!) viewpoints (if it were about methods, many countries and organizations in the world would have to be on the list).

But the most important aspect, I think, was for people to see that we are ordinary people. They asked a lot about the backgrounds of the guerrilla fighters, why we joined, etc. I think that some of them "discovered" that we are actually people, with viewpoints, with dreams, who had no other option than to join the guerrilla forces. If the mainstream media have to be believed, guerrilla fighters are all playing the role of the bad guys in this terror movie called Colombian Conflict. We are the cause of it. The ones who, for some reason that never becomes clear, want war. Otherwise, we wouldn't be on the list of terrorist organizations, would we?

The reality isn't black and white though, and I think this meeting helped a lot in providing information so that people can make a fair judgement of the conflict in Colombia. But it also helped us, female guerrilla fighters of the FARC-EP and members of the Gender Sub-commission, to open our view and see that there is a lot of solidarity out there with Colombian people.

The delegation also met separately with negotiators of the FARC-EP and the Colombian Government, and with the guarantor countries Norway and Cuba.

PKK, the Workers Party of Kurdistan: many people know their name, few really know what their struggle is about. Www.farc-epeace.org had the opportunity to speak with two representatives of the PKK's women's organization - PAJK, Zelal Dersim and Asia Dicle, about the situation in the Middle-East, IS, the role of the United States, the peace process with the Turkish government and, last but not least, the PKK struggle for freedom. This is the third part of the interview.

"History, in a sense, is the history of the dominant male who gained power with the rise of classed society" Abdullah Öcalan

Introduction.Liberating Life: Woman's Revolution is a collection of different articles written by Abdullah Öcalan - PKK's supreme leader - on gender and women's liberation. Öcalan, through study and practice since the seventies, came to the conclusion that the enslavement of women was the start of all other forms of enslavement. This conclusion has led PKK to make important theoretical and practical progress on the emancipation, organization and, ultimately, the liberation of women. Öcalan's theory and findings are to be found in the aforementioned collection of articles. About the practical application and organizational impact of this theory, we spoke with Zelal Dersim and Asia Dicle, two representatives of the PKK's women's organization PAJK. According to them, the freedom of society depends on the freedom of women.

Peace Delegation: Could you give us a general overview of the historical development of women's participation in Kurdistan?

Zelal: After the decade of the nineties, there are all the time new and more women's organizations coming up; women start to organize themselves economically, socially and politically. In the beginning their role was mostly passive; however, this started to change, it became more active throughout the years, within the party but also within society. We have now come to a point at which we have a political system, which appoints two representatives on all levels: one man and one woman. This is the case for example in Rojava, where the regional parliaments in a town or a city work like this. People don?t choose just one mayor; they choose two, always. It has to be one man and one woman. This system is also applied within PKK. Within the higher ranks of the movement, where strategic decisions are being taken, there are always a man and a woman, with equal power.

Asia: There was an important event that pretty much changed the way in which female commanders were perceived by men. In 1992, Turkey, United States and the Peshmerga forces were waging war together against PKK. Many commanders were fighting this war in a mountainous area. There was one important, strategic mountain in that area; the commander who was fighting with his troops on this mountain decided to surrender and leave it to the enemy. Well, a female guerrilla fighter called Beritan, who wasn?t even a commander but who had a great authority over the troops, said she didn?t want to leave the mountain. She fought until everyone around her was killed. The Peshmerga arrived and saw that there was only one woman left. She took her weapon and destroyed it because she didn't want the enemy to have it. She destroyed it with stones. Everybody is watching her and they tell her to get down and surrender. But at that moment, she throws herself off the mountain and kills herself. That is when a lot of Peshmerga decided to stop fighting and the combat situation completely changed. Her behaviour made the enemy respect PKK and our female combatants. From that moment on, female commanders started to rise at all places.

PD:But in a military situation it would be complicated to have two persons taking decisions?.

Asia: Within the HPG guerrilla forces, female guerrilla combatants have organized themselves in separate units called YJA Star: the women?s self-defence forces. They have their own headquarters and their own school for commanders. YJA Star often pauses the war, in order to give more importance to education. Then all women come together to discuss about social problems, politics but also specific problems of women and conflicts between guerrilla fighters. By the way, our Party (PKK) also has its own women department called PAJK, which we represent.

PD: A widespread symptom of patriarchy in Latin America is what we call machismo, which is present in all corners of the country and the continent. Does it exist in Kurdistan?

Asia: During the decade of the eighties, when women wanted to join PKK, our male fighters said: "but we are talking about war here, you are weak, you can't handle weapons". They didn't believe that women could fight like men; this has been an enormous problem in our movement. After that stage, when women were finally allowed to join, they said: ?OK then, but you can't participate in the war, you will have to participate in women's tasks, just like in society: cleaning and cooking. The development and understanding about the role of women within our movement has been slow and gradual since the beginning. At the beginning, when we thought of a revolutionary person, we also thought of him being a man. What is in your mind, is always a man. For example Ché Guevara is a man; people always say: we want to be like Ché. But I am a woman, I am different. That was something that was lacking; the consciousness that the image of a revolutionary can also be a woman. To overcome these prejudices has been difficult.

Zelal: When you talk about freedom for our country, millions of people will agree. When you talk about freedom for women, very few people will join you. They say: "I don't want anybody to influence in my relationship with my wife or my girlfriend". First we have to explain them that to achieve a free homeland, you have to achieve the liberation of the people who live in it. If the people aren't free, the country can't be free, either. We have to do a great educational job to make men and women understand this and make them aware. In this process, criticism and self-criticism are essential; if a man doesn't respect a female commander, this means he won't have any opportunities anymore in the future, because 500 people come together and he will have to respond for his behaviour before all these people. This is a very important principle within PKK, a priority. After criticism, of course there should be a change in behaviour.

Asia: Something else is the way men perceive or treat women's bodies. For many men in our society, the women are symbols of their honour. If you want to destroy a man's honour, you attack his wife. This is a very strong element in our society. And what happened? When women joined the PKK and were killed in the war, their corpses got in hands of the army. The army plays with their bodies, they rape them. This is to make the Kurdish men feel that their honour has been taken away. So at the beginning the male combatants didn't want to accept the reality that we are fighting a war and within this war, our bodies are the same and it is equally terrible that the enemy does those things with male or with female bodies. Of course this whole idea is based on our patriarchal society and that was the way they perceived it. But things have changed now.